New Delhi: The TIME magazine has described Prime Minister Narendra Modi as India’s “divider in chief” on the cover of its May 20 issue. Modi’s picture was on all international issues of the magazine except the United States edition which has a cover story on Democrat Elizabeth Warren who is running for the White House in 2020.
The cover story, written by novelist Aatish Taseer,son of Indian journalist Tavleen Singh and late Pakistani politician and businessman Salmaan Taseer has the headline: “Can the world’s largest democracy endure another five years of a Modi government?” A second article, by Ian Bremmer, president and founder of Eurasia Group, a global political risk research and consulting firm, treats Modi far more positively, suggesting that Modi is “India’s best hope” for economic reform.
The cover depicts a portrait of 68-year-old Modi.
Taseer’s article notes that “If in 2014 he (Modi) was able to exploit differences in order to create a climate of hope, in 2019 he is asking people to stave off their desperation by living for their differences alone.
“Then he was a messiah, ushering in a future too bright to behold, one part Hindu renaissance, one part South Korea’s economic programme. Now he is merely a politician who has failed to deliver, seeking re-election. Whatever else might be said about the election, hope is off the menu,” he says.
In 2014, Modi converted cultural anger into economic promise. He spoke of jobs and development. Taking a swipe at the socialist state, he famously said, ‘Government has no business being in business’. That election, though it is hard to believe now, was an election of hope, the article says.
“Not only has Modi’s economic miracle failed to materialize, he has also helped create an atmosphere of poisonous religious nationalism in India,” Taseer writes.
Far from his promise of development for all, he has achieved a state in which Indians are increasingly obsessed with their differences, according to the article.
On Congress — India’s oldest party — he said it has no more political imagination than to send Priyanka Gandhi – Rahul Gandhi’s sister – to join her brother’s side. It would be equivalent to America’s Democratic Party fielding Hillary Clinton again in 2020, with the added enticement of her daughter Chelsea as Vice President.
“Modi is lucky to be blessed with so weak an opposition – a ragtag coalition of parties, led by the Congress, with no agenda other than to defeat him. Even so, doubts assail him, for he must know he has not delivered on the promise of 2014. It is why he has resorted to looking for enemies within,” he wrote.
On the other hand, Bremmer’s article notes that while Modi’s economic record is mixed, “India still needs change, and Modi remains the person most likely to deliver. He has improved relations with China, the US and Japan, but it’s his domestic development agenda that has done the most to improve the lives and prospects of hundreds of millions of people”.
Outlining the achievements of the Modi-led government, Bremmer talks about the Goods and Services Tax enacted in 2017, the “unprecedented amounts” of money directed towards the country’s new infrastructure, expansion of the Aadhaar biometric identification system that began under the previous Congress–led government.
“Modi has the instinct to dominate and the thin skin of other strongmen, but he also has a genuine track record in providing the kind of reform that developing India urgently needs,” Bremmer writes.
Taseer starts his article saying that in 2014, India became the “first of the great democracies to fall to populism”. According to him, Modi won those elections riding on hope but this time “whatever else might be said…hope is off the menu”.
The article says that Modi’s ascension in 2014 showed that “beneath the surface of what the elite had believed was a liberal syncretic culture, India was indeed a cauldron of religious nationalism, anti-Muslim sentiment and deep-seated caste bigotry”.
Taseer describes Modi’s record on women’s issues as “spotty”. He also criticises the appointment of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh ideologue S Gurumurthy to the board of the Reserve Bank of India, and calls Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath a “hate-mongering priest in robes of saffron”. Taseer describes the candidature of Malegaon blasts accused Pragya Singh Thakur in the Lok Sabha election from Bhopal as an example of “the spectre of extreme nationalism and criminality” becoming inseparable.
